


A Building Through the Ages

by HerAwesomeShinyness



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Extended Metaphors, Gen, How Do I Tag, Mental Breakdown, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13155156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerAwesomeShinyness/pseuds/HerAwesomeShinyness
Summary: In the great city of Tirion, there dwelt a young man, who had built his mind into a palace, so as to hold all his thoughts and his struggles without troubling others.But how can a solitary palace, even one of the mind, survive through the great upheavals of the First Age?





	A Building Through the Ages

Picture a palace. It is beautiful, truly glorious, wrought from the finest of stones, crowned in proud, vibrant banners.  
It is solidly built, not discarding integrity for beauty, so that when it is stressed by small storms, slowly growing in size over the years, some of the banners might be ripped, or a crenelation might fall, or a roof tile might be blown away, but everything is quickly returned to its usual splendor.

Picture a palace. It has been faced with a battle, its stones have been stained with blood, some small detailings have fallen to the ground.  
Not everything has been repaired when fire quickly sweeps through, and, in guilt, only the biggest, most visible damage is dealt with.  
Another battle. More flames. More guilt, and now more pressing concerns, more repairs are neglected.

Picture a palace. It still stands strong and proud. To an unpracticed observer it might seem as beautiful as it has ever been, and practiced observers are either far away or distracted.

Picture a palace. It was built in peace, by some who had never known war. It was never meant to withstand the harshness it is facing now.  
It is a siege that breaches its walls. And it is one by a cruel enemy, for it keeps attacking. For years. Slowly every building, every sweeping tower, every shed and garden wall, all of them are reduced to rubble.

Picture a pile of rubble. The stones were once part of something great and beautiful, but they have been languishing out in the open, left to the cruel mercy of the elements for long years, and they have nearly forgotten.

The pile of rubble, abandoned in warning, is found, and slowly, slowly, plans are made o rebuild it to the glory it once was. The times are wrong though. The war that created the rubble is only growing harsher, so it is used to construct a great, and proud, and strong fortress, alone and indomitable upon its hill.

Picture a pile of rubble. Cunning hands and stubborn wills fashion it into something different from its original purpose, and succeed masterfully.

Picture a fortress. It is strong, and harsh, but it retains hints of the beauty the previous structure held, in small decorations, elegant carvings, and always, always, proud banners flying in the wind.

Picture a fortress. The stones that make up its structure are weathered, but very finely carved, under the damage. This does not matter. The fortress is strong, solid. Any elegance it may or may not still hold is irrelevant. Still, if one looks upon it, proudly rising into the sky, it brings memories of some glittering court far away, in more peaceful lands.

The fortress often comes under attack, small stones come loose, the roof tiles might fall, the bright banners on its walls and towers are sometimes ripped. They are always returned to their place, to their perfect functionality. Nothing may harm the fortress for long.

Picture a fortress. It has a secret. Its walls, so visibly resilient, are held up by solid wooden struts, invisible to the outside world, that are carefully placed and replaced by concerned allies. The rubble it was built from has trouble staying together without aid, and even the strongest mortar does not give the strength, the support, necessary to resist in a hateful world.

There are many allies, though, always ready to help, it is never necessary to worry that the stone walls of the fortress might ever lack the struts they require.

Picture a fortress. It has stood strong through many harsh years, through wars and sieges, through storms and great fires. It has managed to withstand, perhaps with a bit of help, everything the world could throw at it.

Suddenly, a great flood, an angry river. But no, these waters are harsh, and filled with salt that eats away at the stones even as they sweep away everything. A river of tears rushes through the fortress, taking with it all the carefully-placed supports, leaving its cruel marks upon the stone.

Picture a fortress. Though it has been greatly weakened by war, it still stands, partly through the panicked repairs wrought on the insistence of its closest ally. One of few, now.

The war is still raging, so the fortress, its once-beautiful stones ever more cracked, pitted, unstable, weathers attack after attack, constantly weakening, but never showing it, never falling.  
The only repairs that there is time to make now are to its exterior. It looks nearly as strong as it ever has.

Picture a fortress. The war, it is known now, is hopeless, but pitiful repairs are ever happening, only ever winning the fight against true defeat, almost never against the enemy that is despair. But tiny cracks, which wouldn’t have been thought important enough to try and fix, are reached by small hands, and are revealed to have been weakening the whole structure. Once they are healed the fortress looks, in the right light, strong again.

Picture a fortress. It has suffered many great losses. Nearly all its allies are gone, through destruction, or through shifts in the lines of war. Still, the war must be fought, so the fighting continues, and stones are chipped and cracked, mortar is slowly washed away by the water used to try and remove the blood of every battle, the great banners grow tattered and frayed and stained and charred, with no time to be repaired.

Picture a fortress. It has been won down by many harsh years of war. Many parts of it, not essential ones, of course, have collapsed, or otherwise become unusable. But it is still standing, strong against the darkness.

The light, though craved for so long, is unexpected. What is even more unexpected is the fire it brings with it.

Picture a fortress. Harsh, pitiless light is revealing all its imperfections, all the damage littering it. It reveals just how much the fortress has been marred by the long war. As it does so, the furious fire it brought blazes.

The few wooden supports left are destroyed, so thoroughly that not even ashes are left. All the decorations, furnishings, the few remaining images of loved things, all are destroyed.

The proud banners evaporate into the air, the heat of the flames too much for something as delicate as cloth.

The mortar crumbles into dust, and is blown away by the fury of the fire.

The stones are the only ones that resist the devastation, barely. They are half-melted, some have broken, as the all-consuming heat revealed hidden weaknesses, but they are still there. Nothing else is, though, and stones alone do not make up a fortress.

Picture a fortress. Devastated. Its collapse is swift and ruinous, and on the proud but blackened hill there stand only charred stones, so ruined their former beauty can only barely be glimpsed, by those few who know what to look for.

Picture a pile of rubble. It is far more desolate than the rubble it was centuries ago, infinitely more scarred and beaten down, there is nothing here now to remember the war that had been fought. There are still small fires, and the heat is still unbearable, so that occasionally one more stone will crack, further destroying the unrecognisable remains of the palace that once stood here.

 

The person that was once Maedhros (who was himself once Nelyafinwë Maitimo Russandol, but that was long ago) stands up. He (he? Yes. He) stands and knows, on some deep level, that he failed. He doesn’t know what or who he failed, or how, but he knows he did, and catastrophically so. He knows, somehow, that he has done many terrible things, and hurt many. He knows he is in pain. He knows he deserves this, so he doesn’t try to remove the source of the pain. He probably brought it upon himself anyway.

He feels himself burning. He sees a chasm in the tortured earth, which promises more fire. He knows he deserves to burn, for he has brought great pain to more people than he can count, and he needs to be stopped.

He does not know of any he would harm by leaving the world. He does know that many might still be alive if he had left earlier.

He hears “Nelyo! Brother, stop!”

He wonders, vaguely, who Nelyo is, and what he is doing to induce such anguish in his brother. It doesn’t matter. He has caused so much more anguish than this Nelyo ever could, even if he tried.

He tightens his left hand, the burning increases slightly, and he welcomes this, for he knows he deserves to burn.

He steps forward, and thus ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Now, I'm pretty sure I accidentally stole most of the ending from somewhere, but if I have to live with "Maedhros' sanity, but as a building" as a thing in my head, then so do you.
> 
> Edit: I think i figured it out. The ending section liberally draws from Himring's "Doom, Gloom, and Maedhros" series and from bunn's "Mandos" and "Return to Aman", I do apologise for the vagueness, but I don't really have time for the re-re-read that looking for the precise stories in these series would inevitably prompt.


End file.
